Observations of the 18.6-year cycle effects on the sea-level oscillations in the North Atlantic Ocean

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica “E. R. Caianiello”, Università degli Studi di Salerno - Via Ponte don Melillo, I-84084 Fisciano (SA), Italy, EU
² Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell'Informazione, Ingegneria Elettrica e Matematica Applicata, Università degli Studi di Salerno - Via Ponte don Melillo, I-84084 Fisciano (SA), Italy, EU

Received: 19 July 2012
Accepted: 22 October 2012

Abstract

We investigate the physical processes that generate the ocean tides, whose understanding has important influence on the marine activities. We analyze historical sea-level oscillations, continuously recorded from six stations in the North Atlantic Ocean spanning a time period of eighty years from 1926. In this paper, an Independent-Component-Analysis–based approach is adopted to obtain a clear identification of the main tidal constituents in term of waveform in time domain from the simultaneously recorded signals. This technique separates at most six nonlinear tidal components which are weakly superimposed. The fundamental objective is to extract information on the degree of complexity of the involved dynamics and on the very long-term tidal constituents. This is particularly significant to understand the response of the ocean to the tidal forcing. We put the emphasis on the near-bidecadal time scale and its influence on the short-periods tides. In details the Moon 18.6 y nodal cycle modulation acts in the ocean in quite an analogous manner to the fortnightly modulation in many shallow seas. Our results give new insights into the evidence for an 18.6 y effect in the climate/ocean variation whose physical mechanism details remain murky.